Monday, September 28, 2009

Gusts to the bones

Wind blowing through his maneup onto my hands which hold two reins loosely.We ride, or I ride and he carries, down a gravel roadchunks of itself missingafter log trucks rush by with their fallen victims.

All around us, before us and in front of us,lay fallen leaves, dead on arrival.He stops to ask me with his ears and a twinge of his neck,"May I have one?""No," I say with tight leg, "we still have a ways to go."

And we move on,the flies sitting in the corners of his eyeswhich he blinks away, only to have them return seconds later.With each gust of wind I watch his mane's journey,left, then right, left, right again.I lose my sense of place as I watch,waiting for the course strands to settle again.

We near our destination,a small valley with abandoned house,nothing left but an old satellite dish,and a gate falling down, bent in age.The hay has been cut, bundled and hauled off to old barnsleaving us this empire of grass, and a backdrop of ancient trees.We hear the true collaboration of trees and windwith branches and space humming, hissing, and groaning .It's not a greeting, or a playful song -It's a resonance.Ignoring skin, it sinks down into the flesh and then the bone,while the heart skips beats trying to keep up.

8 comments:

I don't consider myself to well trained in poems- but I swear, this just flowed out of me after my ride today.Hopefully the spacing and stanzas and all won't irritate my more experienced poem writing compadres [I'm talking to you Dan].

Your poem is lovely. Have Dan tell you about the distraction of death words like "fallen images" and "dead on arrival" in a poem so filled with life. Poetry is as much about what you don't say as what you do. Poetry is the freedom from too many words.The lines "It's a resonance. Ignoring skin...., While the heart skips beats trying to keep up." is wonderful. Write more. I would love one about Guinnias.

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